Figure 2. Properties of the ventral temporal cortex representations.

a | Generalization and specificity. Stronger functional MRI responses to faces are maintained across format (grey level and silhouettes) (left bar chart). Responses are higher for upright silhouettes than for upside-down silhouettes (right bar chart). **P < 0.001, significantly different from upright face silhouettes. Data from REF. 85. b | Separability of category information in the ventral temporal cortex (VTC) but not early visual cortex (V1–V2). Correlation matrices indicating the similarity between distributed responses to pairs of images from various categories (19 images per category) in the VTC and in V1–V2. In the top triangle, each cell shows the correlation between distributed responses to a pair of images. The bottom triangle shows the average correlation across images of a category. Hot colours indicate similar distributed response patterns and cold colours indicate dissimilar distributed response patterns. Data are from REF. 78 and show electrocorticography measurements in an example subject. c | Flexibility. Hierarchical clustering of distributed VTC responses measured with functional MRI reveals a separation between superordinate categories (inanimate versus animate), between basic-level categories (faces versus bodies) and between subordinate categories (human faces versus animal faces). This demonstrates that multiple levels of category information are represented in the VTC. Part c is adapted with permission from REF. 23, Cell Press (Elsevier).